I remember the lead-up to JotB coming out, with myself and a few others going around like Holmes and Watson trying to figure out every single thing about the film.
Then it came out, I watched it almost immediately, then got to the end and was like 'is that it?' I think I set my expectations way too high for this. The premise was promising, Littlefoot's dad going missing and him and his friends having to go on a rescue mission did have a lot of promise and I was hoping maybe the series would try going back to its roots in terms of atmosphere or at least the first few sequels. It seemed like it was more similar to 11-13 especially with the dialogue, and they are my least favourite sequels. So I was pretty disappointed and at that point, realised that maybe new LBT content just wouldn't appeal to me like I thought it would.
Five years later, I watched it again. I watched it immediately after watching all of the other sequels, and yeah... it's not as bad as I remember it, not at all. I'll put my full thoughts into a bigger review I'm writing, but for now I'll just say, yep, it's an average LBT sequel. And, like 11-13, I did not have the privilege of going in with 'nostalgia goggles' like I did with the older sequels, so I think I'm going to judge those ones more harshly anyway.
I did feel like some parts were rushed (especially the ending), having the sharpteeth be distracted from the hiding kids/adults by something much smaller than them not once, but twice, was pretty lame, the CGI was pretty jarring in some scenes, I'm not really sure why they put Ruby and Chomper in the film without any kind of explanation, especially considering their role ended up being so small anyway (and could have been covered by Wild Arms alone), and I am still bitter about the lack of a certain green longneck. When the narrator mentioned Littlefoot's mother I was pretty excited but given that she wasn't brought up again, when the potential of losing his dad as well would have been the perfect opportunity to do so, was kinda sad (I live for the Littlefoot's mother references
).
On the other hand, I personally love the new score, seeing a HD LBT was pretty cool, the songs were fine, I liked Etta and her morbid sense of humour, and my hot take of this one? I liked Wild Arms. He did have a Yellow Belly-ness about him and when I first saw him my first thought was '
oh no', but keeping him with the adults and only showing him every so often worked so much better. I actually found myself laughing a couple of times at the adults' reaction to him.
There certainly are a lot of flaws in this one but overall I think it's an alright LBT sequel. It still hangs towards the lower end of my preference list, but not as far down as it used to be. Not the best, but certainly not the worst (XIII still proudly holds that title).
